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"Sorry, Eliza," she said. "The line at the Starbucks was awful, and you know how I get when I don't have my coffee."
"Next time, why don't we drive someplace less crowded, rather than waiting?"
"What a good idea." She unlocked her car, a mid-range BMW, unremarkable for the neighborhood but nice enough for me to feel confident in my choice. I hate the conditions some humans live in. Squalor is one thing, but there's no reason to wallow in it. "Do you want to drive?"
Clearly she thought I was the dominant half of this friendship. That was good: sometimes people write themselves into the role of my protector or keeper, and those can be difficult to get away from. I allowed my smile to turn gracious, following the cues from her mental response to get the shape of it exactly right. Our acquaintance was still new enough that I needed to be careful if I wanted it to deepen properly.
"Now, Barb, you know I don't drive when the sun's up," I said. "My eyes, you know. You go ahead."
Her cheeks reddened. "I'm sorry. We'll go straight home."
"Thank you," I said, and got into the car, balancing my teacup on my knee as I closed my eyes and settled deep into the buttery leather seat. Yes. This was definitely an improvement.
Barb chattered idly as she drove, and I didn't interrupt or try to stop her. She was contradicting herself almost constantly, first pointing out a landmark and then recounting a story about a time she and I had gone there together and done some festive thing or other. I paid her little attention, letting her work through all the snarls of our "relationship" without input from me.
This is what it is to be a cuckoo: people who look at me will always see what they want to see, what they need to see in order to be drawn to protect me. I can shape the flavor of their response, turning it familial or fawning, but for the most part, I don't bother. The human mind is elastic and impressionable. I've found that if I simply hurl myself into their psyches and embed myself there, they'll heal around me, finding the most stable formation to support my needs.
People who don't appreciate the simple elegance of what we do call us parasites, say that the way we reshape the world is outside the natural order of things. They're wrong, of course. We're as natural as anything else the universe has to offer. It's not our fault that we're more effective predators than anything else on this world.
Humans, especially, don't like to remember that their world isn't the only one around.
Barb pulled into the driveway of a pleasant two-story house: not as palatial as some I had commandeered, but sufficient for an afternoon. I smiled at her as I got out of the car.
"I'm so glad you could drive me home."
Her thoughts roiled, confusion kicking up the silt at the bottom of her mind. That was important. She had settled into the framework of our relationship all by herself, and now it was time for me to quash anything that would contradict it. I mentally reached out and pressed down on the parts of her that wanted to object, to rebel. It took only a few seconds for her thoughts to settle, her face going blank enough that even I could see the lack of animation.
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Humans and their faces. If they could share their emotions silently, like civilized people, they wouldn't need so many expressions.
"Of course, Eliza," she said. "You know I'd do anything for a friend."
"I know," I said, and held out my hand. "My keys, please?"
She tossed them to me without objection.
The walkway was clean and well maintained. Barb trailed behind me like a puppy eager for approval, and I allowed it. If nothing else, having her around would mean not needing to search for anything, and unless I wanted to order her to drive off the nearest available cliff--not out of the question if she got annoying enough--I could have her chauffeur me around for a few days while she "slept over" with the friend she thought I was.
The door opened on an airy foyer with a domed ceiling that must have been hell to cool during the height of the summer, given humans' narrow range of comfortable temperatures. Truly, it's a miracle they were able to survive long enough to develop central air. They should have died off long before their technology progressed to such a point, leaving the world to a dominant species capable of enjoying it properly.
Still, the windows were thick enough to keep the place nicely insulated, and the curtains I'd seen from the outside had looked heavy. Light-blocking. That meant I'd have all the things a modern cuckoo needs to sleep peacefully. "I think I'll lie down for a little while," I said. "Feel free to make yourself at home until I wake up."
Barb nodded, thoughts turning painfully grateful, as if this weren't her house and I hadn't just taken it over as easily as plucking an apple from a tree. That's another problem with humans: they bounce back so quickly that sometimes they scar over damage that any other thinking species would have been able to eventually route around and recover from.
If my ancestors had been looking for the perfect prey, they couldn't have done better than humanity. They'll love us all the way to their own graves, and if they leave ghosts when they go, they'll keep on loving us forever. We win. Every time, we win.
Barb's bedroom was on the second floor. I walked a circuit around it, considering the size of the bed--queen--the lack of pictures of family members or pets, even the stuffed bunny on the pillow. Excellent. She'd been a casual acquisition, the minion equivalent of grabbing takeout when it was too late to get a proper dinner, but it seemed like she might be something worth keeping for a little longer than I'd originally planned.
Humans are fragile. If one is going to be in the business of cultivating them, one must also accept that they will occasionally need to be replaced--and that the good ones should be kept for as long as possible, to make those replacements less frequent.
The linens smelled of lavender. I put my teacup down on the bedside table, crawled beneath the covers, and closed my eyes. Sleep would do more than simply restore my body. It would consolidate my hold on Barb, and through her, on her neighbors. It would make this my home, and not simply a house I happened to occupy, until I was prepared to move along.
Sleep came swiftly. It always does, when things are going well.
My species came from a world far from this one, across the gulf of a dozen dimensions, each with their own delights and dangers to offer. I was born on earth, as were all the cuckoos of my generation, and the generation before us, going back to our arrival in this world some five hundred years ago. We had exhausted the world that had been sheltering us, sucking it dry and denuding it of entertainments. A change had been necessary. A change will almost always do us good. So a hive had come together, and working together, had lifted up a queen and used her to do what queens do best. They had used her to find us something new to devour.
Our shatter point had formed in Qingyang in China. I sometimes wish I could have been there. Thousands died, humans and yokai alike, as they tried to beat back the waves of what must have seemed like an alien invasion--not quite right, but not quite wrong, either. They couldn't win, of course. We're unstoppable, when we want to be. When the dust settled, the rift was closed, and the cuckoos were masters of a new world.
